GROTTA DI ROCCIA SAN SEBASTIANO

Mondragone (CE) - Campania

Discovered in 1999 and explored in later years by Marcello Piperno (Naples University) and colleagues, Grotta di Roccia San Sebastiano gave back a sequence between Mousterian and final Gravettian, with traces also at the entrance to an Epigravettian human presence.

Historical framework

Upper Paleolithic

Coinciding with the arrival of the species Homo sapiens in Europe was the most recent phase of the Paleolithic (between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago). Here, we see a break with the previous cultural traditions of the Neanderthals, and the beginning of a series of utilitarian and symbolic practices which developed in the millennia leading up to the arrival of the Neolithic. The presence of strategically located settlements, subsistence practices based on hunting and gathering, the modality of funerary rites and the beginning of the figurative art allow us to follow the transformation of the earliest sapiens cultures.